


if i had it again, i'd wanna know

by orphan_account



Series: that's quite a lot of fahc aus [1]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Batman AU, Fake AH Crew, Politics AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-14 23:57:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13018932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: "But that’s the question, innit? If everything happens somewhere, is the us that did the other thing still us? Like, if I wasn't running late today and I made toast is that me or a whole other person who has toa-"“Gavin,” Michael says, so reflexively his brain doesn’t even need to engage, just muscle memory at this point. “Shut the fuck up.”[Assorted AU fills from prompts/requests]





	1. a public service announcement followed me home the other day [politics au, jack/geoff]

 

Geoff is half asleep, Jack’s weight as she rests across his chest warm and comforting. She’s on her phone and keeps making disgruntled noises. She’s always like this during mid-terms.

“What?” he asks, dutifully.

“Nothing,” she lies, then mutters to herself about disingenuous soundbites and pet pundits, wriggling closer. He wraps his arms around her waist.

Geoff keeps a respectful distance when they’re in the public eye even though he knows he’s lucky enough that she’s genuine about this, she wants this. But he also knows she’s never going to get up on a podium and make an acceptance speech if at her side she’s got some asshole with a delinquent youth and a metaphorical fuck you inked on his skin, who fended off the world for twenty years with shots before 10am. Maybe one day, but not before she wins everything that he knows she deserves.

Of course that is something he can’t tell Jack, ever, because she’d probably put a ring on him and have a press conference about it before he’d even finished the sentence. So he uses his show as an excuse, says he doesn’t want to be a gimmick, or a distraction.

“Go on, say it again, I'm in bed with the liberal media, fuck you _ _-__ ” she blurts out finally, glaring at whatever article she’s reading, “you hypocritical piece of shit.”

This afternoon they’re driving up to the GOP convention so Michael can run around with a camera behind him accosting attendees and demanding his second amendment right; _I want my fucking gun right now, come on where‘s the stash, give me a fucking cool looking one._ The kid had wanted to bring props but Geoff vetoed it, because he’s an asshole of a boss but he draws the line at getting one of his favourite employees tased and arrested, or worse.

“I hate to break it to you,” Geoff says, kissing her neck and shrugging, “but that’s not entirely wrong. Well, this morning anyway.”

“No,” Jack corrects primly. “I am fucking the liberal media on his couch even though we’re both old enough to know better, which is completely different. Besides, I’m allowed to have sex with anyone still relegated to the Comedy Channel. It’s a little-known constitutional provision.”

“Wait, so, fucking as in the present tense?” Geoff says hopefully, and she grins and chucks the phone away to the carpet before straddling him and biting at his bottom lip.

That night she appears in the timeslot right before his, metaphorically ripping some poor asshole’s spine out of his stomach on CNN because he made the mistake of taking her on about Planned Parenthood. Geoff is about two minutes late to set but they run the ads a little long to cover it, they know how he is when she’s interviewing.

He runs through the intro, drily pointing out exactly how fucked this flaming trashbag of a country is with his signature exhausted exasperation before they cut to Gavin’s little skit on the latest british royal  scandal. They got together and wrote that one drunk but didn’t cut a single double-entendre on the sober edit, except for the deep-throat visual gag, because bless his heart Gavin tried but he couldn’t look at a banana for the rest of the day without gagging.

In between ad breaks on her interview, Jack sits still while they fix up her make-up, and flips through an interview Geoff did for Time magazine last week. Some entertainment reporter asks him what his trick is, how he manages make a mockery of Washington’s top players and always have one of their own soundbites as the punchline. _Well,_ Geoff answers, and she can practically hear him drawling it, _my staff and I do this thing where we watch the news and listen to the shit they say._

Geoff’s got her up on a pedestal, but hell if she doesn’t know she’s just as lucky.

 

*

 

Jack, for all her natural instinct and growing wealth of experience, doesn’t like Ryan doing her dirty work for her because she is the last human being in Washington that doesn’t seem to realise that is what a chief of staff is _for _.__ Thankfully, everyone who works for her is fully aware, and when he walks down the corridor with a perfectly blank expression they all veer out of his way.

Today is not a good day. Today Ryan has to go to a junior staffer meeting to knock some heads together until they either pass out or see sense, whichever comes first. Subsequently he may also, unfortunately, encounter interns. He makes a point of trying to not take anything out on interns; if they fuck up it’s their supervisor who he needs to eviscerate, but still. God damn it.

He can always tell the ones who scraped in on luck or skill and determination rather than an Ivy League degree and family connection, because they’re usually the ones he wants to strangle the least. They tend to get on with photocopying and running messages or whatever the fuck they do without looking either like the entire thing is distasteful, or worse, so eager they’d probably chase a stick if he yelled fetch. They’ve worked outside this circus, they know what work actually looks like.

While a half-table of old school tie types whom Ryan mentally refers to as Chad-One through to Chad-Five try to explain why the latest social media campaign is in fact relatively successful, a kid in a hoodie and beanie passes out coffees to everyone.

“We’re dealing with a demographic that simply doesn’t engage with issues based-” Chad-Two continues, who appears to be the alpha male of the little group.

“Bullshit,” the intern says, not quite as under his breath as he probably meant it to be. Everyone, including Ryan, looks at him.

Chad-Two smirks. “The coffee? Yeah, it is. Or the fact you decided to open your mouth when the adults are talking?” A couple of the indeterminable Chads chuckle.

The intern straightens slightly. “It failed because it was patronising,” he says quietly. “You wouldn’t know how they’d engage with issues, you haven’t given them any.”

Ryan clears his throat. Everyone freezes. “Clear out your desk,” he says, “hand in your pass, and get out.”

“Yes, Mr. Haywood,” the intern says, with the calmness of someone who expected it.

“I’m not talking to you,” Ryan says, and looks straight at Chad-Two, until he goes white and gets up. Ryan turns back to the intern. “Name?”

“I- Jeremy, sir?”

“Jeremy, you can go wait for me outside.”

After the subdued remainder of the meeting he finds Jeremy waiting on a bench outside and grabs his arm without explanation. He pulls him down the hallway then upstairs, further than Jeremy’s pass lets him go, but no one is stupid enough to stop Ryan. He pulls the beanie off halfway, because it’s the middle of summer for god’s sake. Jeremy runs his hands over blue hair and ducks his head.

“Oh,” he says, “just started two days ago an- sorry, I can get rid of that.”

The most frustrating thing, Ryan thinks, is that Jack will probably find it delightful.

“Do I look like I give a fragment of a fuck about your hair?” Ryan says. “University? Law school?”

“Yeah, but uh, design?” Jeremy says, “I’m doing post-grad law now but only part time, with this and some casual, uh, retail stuff. I can keep up with the hours though, I swear. Wait, where are-”

Ryan bundles him into Jack’s office. Jeremy, who on seeing her has apparently forgotten how to say words, stands there wide-eyed.

Jack looks them up and down. “When I said I wanted my own intern you said that was a bad idea.”

“I changed my mind, you can have this one, it’s name is Jeremy,” Ryan glares enough that she doesn’t laugh at him. “I’ll have HR organise a stipend so he can stop moonlighting at McDonald’s or wherever it is they pay kids the minimum wage these days and get overworked here instead.”

“That’s sweet, Ryan,” Jack, “thank you.”

“It is not,” Ryan says, highly offended, “it is me putting a human barrier between myself and you when you start having feelings. And making sure you don’t fall sleep at your desk for the fourth time this month. It’s called self-interest." He looks at the kid. "If you get buyer’s remorse don’t come crying to me.”

He pulls his own security pass from his lanyard, shoves it at Jeremy and stalks out of the room.

“Hi,” Jeremy says. “I’m Jeremy. Um. He already said that. Sorry.” He holds the pass at a slight distance like it’s a chemical weapon. “What’s this for?”

Jack stands up and walks around the desk to pull out Jeremy’s standard intern pass from the plastic slip on his lanyard and insert Ryan’s. “It’ll do until we get you one with the clearance you need. He never really needs one.” She gestures at her face and does an imitation of what the interns universally refer to as Ryan’s murder-eyes. “That usually does the trick.”

 

*

 

Jeremy is new in town and fresh out of university but he is also not an idiot, so in between lying through his teeth to other people’s PA's in order to keep Jack’s schedule within the rules of time and space he also makes sure he’s the one who gets to the hotel first and checks her in whenever they’re in New York, clearing at least one weeknight with a pre-booked taxi to a certain studio on Eleventh Avenue.

She looks at him very carefully on arrival. “Your hair is green today,” she notes, poker-faced like it’s a warm up for the next part of the sentence, “and I see you got two keycards for my room.”

“Oops,” Jeremy says innocently, handing them both to her, and goes off to find the bar.

He never makes it to the bar, because Ryan finds him and pulls him into an empty conference room to look at a series of sample posters, each more of an eyesore than the one before.

“These colours together make my eyes hurt, and also my heart hurt,” Jeremy tells Ryan mournfully, holding the worst one up to show him.

“So fix it,” Ryan says shortly. “Despite common sense, art school has to be useful for something at least once.”

Jeremy calls his favourite ex-tutor, and Jon sweeps in with a resume that includes co-founding a couple of design agencies, a controversial stint in advertising, the audience award at Sundance and several outstanding warrants for graffiti. He's a little bit of a big deal.

“My loveliest boy,” Jon says joyfully, pulling Jeremy into a hug and kissing his cheek before deigning to acknowledge Jack and Ryan with polite handshakes. He’d texted he’d be late from a photoshoot and from what he’s wearing Jeremy honestly can’t tell if he was the photographer or the subject.

“Christ,” Ryan says dully.

“Hello,” Jack says, charmed.

Jeremy had given Jon full warning about what to expect, but he still gets stone cold furious when Fox News has a field day, pulling out every little scrap of gossip they can and a few old lovers out of the woodwork, some of who just happen to be men. They hired Jon to make a fucking poster, not to run on the ticket. It isn’t fair.

Jack calls Jeremy into her office.

“The thing is,” Jack says, "His work is fantastic and we're glad to have him, none of this worries me and as far as I can tell it doesn't worry Jon. But a… friend thought we might want to make that statement a little louder, if Jon is happy to do television. And Ryan suggested it would show solidarity if one of us was on the show with him, because Ryan's a big softie really.” As far as Jeremy is concerned, that may be a true statement but only in an alternate reality. “Now, we can’t put interns on television,” she adds, meaningfully.

“Yeah, of course,” Jeremy says. “I’ll talk to him, he likes Barbara, they could-”

Jack leans back completely failing to hide a smile. “No, Jeremy, I mean we’d like to actually pay you to do the job you’re already doing. You're hired.”

The interview goes great, Michael shouting himself hoarse over _how do you even justify calling this fingerpainting bullshit art, you hipster piece of shit_ , while Jon eggs him on and laughs himself half off the couch, only ever discussing his work or how wonderfully terrible a student Jeremy was. The other thing is only addressed at the end, in with a callback to something idiotic a junior senator said just the day before about rainbow agendas.

“But a serious question now,” Michael says while looking at Jon, suddenly solemn. “I need to ask this.” He waits a beat before he turns to Jeremy. “What’s with the hair?” In the background they've pieced together enough candids for a fairly decent range of red to violet.

“I would love to tell you,” Jeremy says, equally solemn, “but the first rule of the gay agenda is you don’t talk about the gay agenda.” Jon nods in agreement. After they call the final cut Michael takes Jeremy out for drinks with the writers and laughs at how shy he is to meet Gavin, who he’s been watching on youtube since Gavin was a precocious teen doing panel shows back in England.

Jon begs off to go home and play around with the design a little more, smirking like he knows something. The interview may go great, but two days later the poster is all over the internet, all blocks of colour and something about it a raw-edged punch to the gut. There are t-shirts of it out before the official ones are even approved.

"We're adopting the little guy," Gavin informs Michael in the taxi home after filming. "He's tops."

Michael, who is already twelve texts worth in cahoots with Jeremy about getting Geoff and Jack in the same hotel and on the same floor at Burnie's inaugural White House Correspondence Dinner, rolls his eyes. "No shit, Gav."

 

 


	2. can't tell me it's not worth trying [batman au, gen]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for [TomKat](http://archiveofourown.org/users/TomKat/pseuds/TomKat)

At the press conference, Geoff stands straight and unblinking as he delivers a dispassionate statement to the room of flashing cameras and clamouring voices.

Jon is pretty sure he’s never actually seen him with his buttons all done up. It’s telling enough that he’s doing this instead of Trevor, who looks like he was born in a neatly pressed uniform and has most of the press wound around his little finger, but Trevor is civilian liaison and today they’ve put the man in charge on the stand.

“-and at approximately 2am this morning a number of individuals were apprehended during an attempt to force entry into restricted pharmaceutical facilities owned by Haywood Enterprises, with an altercation resulting in several injuries occurring before the arrival of police officers. The investigation is ongoing and as such no further questions will be taken and further details released when deemed necessary for public safety by the Los Santos police department.”

Jon waits until the the protesting and bustle have more or less dissipated and catches Geoff’s arm in the hallway out of the room, mostly out of view. His video camera is in his bag and his notebook in his back pocket, empty hands tilted ever so slightly up to show it.

“It’s _me_ ,” he says softly. “Off record is off record. Can you say if it was him? Or god, I don’t know, It?”

Geoff turns. He looks like he hasn’t slept in two days, which knowing Geoff probably means it’s been more like four days. “No further questions will be taken and further details released when deemed necessary for public safety by the Los Santos police department,” he says blankly, although the look in his eyes is apologetic.

“Okay. Got it,” Jon sighs. “Appreciate your work, Lieutenant.” Geoff nods stiffly and starts to leave.

Ah, hell. “Hey,” Jon says, “look, I don’t sulk that easy.” He’s got his back to anyone who could see and keeps his voice low. “It probably won’t amount to shit, but anything I hear you've got it as long before my editor as I can manage.”

Geoff is still half-facing the few other journalists left milling around so his facial expression doesn’t alter at all. “Appreciate your work, Jon,” he says after a soft moment.

Later, Geoff slumps in his chair, and only opens the door for Jack, because she’s his best, and also if he didn’t she’d probably break it down. She’s got his dress uniform on her arm, which he chooses to ignore for his own mental health.

“How’s the new partner?” he asks, instead.

“Mouthy little hotheaded Jersey asshole,” she says. “Best one you’ve sent me yet, definitely keeping him.”

Geoff smiles, but it drops away quickly. “Preliminary on the thing?”

“All ballistics match with the guns Falcone’s men brought. Might’ve taken one off them, but none of them went down by getting shot.”

“He didn’t kill any of them?”

Jack snorts. “It’s not a bullet, but I suspect blunt trauma to the head from being thrown down three flights of stairs is not recommended by nine out of ten doctors. We lost one to a haemorrhage overnight, and two more are touch and go. But the rest we can start talking to as soon as we’re ready.”

“Okay. So now we have to-”

“You have a social event,” Jack says calmly.

“No, I have a fucking masked vigilante stalking my city! Did you hear what they’re calling him? What the fuck do I do at a fundraiser? Tell them I have fucking bird flu. Tell them I’m dead.”

Jack’s eyes harden. “What you do at a fundraiser is you wear this, you make polite conversation with rich fat old men and their trust fund brats and you kiss their asses as much as you need to to make sure we can afford to give a ballistic vest to everyone in uniform we send out on those streets.”

Geoff takes the jacket from her. “Go away and be right somewhere else,” he says, and she kisses his cheek before she goes.

 

*

 

If Jeremy were any less apathetic about this kind of thing by now he would hate the whole stupid plan, every one of these assholes crammed in the back of the truck raucously swinging semi-automatics and shotguns around in a full-metal dick measuring contest, and he’d hate the stupid fucking halloween masks the most. It's just he can’t bring himself to care enough, fixating on the idea that this is the last job, finish this one and he’s paid it all off and never has to see their faces again.

The only vaguely interesting thing is the guy sat next to Jeremy. He's wedged close to the wall so he won't edge over into Jeremy’s seat even though they’re all packed in way to close. He’s real young, maybe about Jeremy’s age, but Jeremy was driving getaway before he was old enough to have a licence and this one clearly is new to this, or at least new to getting his hands dirty. Jesus christ, he doesn’t even have a gun.

Jeremy curses himself out silently as an idiot soft touch. “Hey, moron,” Jeremy says, pulling his spare pistol from his belt and offering it. “Dress in a hurry or something?”

“Bloody hell,” the guy says in alarm. Accented. British, huh. “Uh, no. I do doors. I’m here to do the doors. Make them be open. I don’t - no thanks.”

Green as they come. As they get closer Jeremy realises the guy is actually trembling a little. Fucking hell.

“Hold on to your fucking pants or something,” Jeremy says, under his breath, looking straight ahead.

“What?” he murmurs, but to his credit, he also looks right ahead like they’re not talking.

“Hold onto something,” Jeremy breathes out in an annoyed little hiss, “or they’ll see you’re fucking shaking.”

“Oh. Thanks,” the kid whispers. “I’m Gavin.”

“Great for you, pal,” Jeremy says, and doesn’t tell him his own name.

It’s skeleton shift in the middle of the night and at first everything goes textbook, all the staff getting on the floor and staying there, and it turns out Gavin is as good with security alarms as he is with doors. Jeremy is scoping out a few rooms in the back when the gunfire and shouting starts. His brain says cops and his gut tells him the panicked shouts and short bursts of fire don’t match right. For the life of him, he could never explain to you why it is he bolts down to the hall to the main biotech storage room, where he knows Gavin is working on the door, some kind of full-on vault bullshit.

He jumps the stairs two or three at a time, and empties his semi-automatic into every power conduit and halogen light visible down hallways or rooms he goes past, starting at least one small fire, and tossing it under a cabinet when the clip is empty. It’s at least enough of a misleading web to slow up pursuit. Hopefully. The last door in the stairway is a fire door, and he secures it as best he can.

He reaches the lowest level and runs bodily into Gavin, who grabs him, panicking.

“Is it police?”

“Yeah,” Jeremy lies, both to Gavin and to himself, “does that close from the inside? Good, open it, get the fuck in-”

“There’s no way out!”

“Gavin,” he says, “there’s no way out because we’re idiots who tried to break into what is basically a _fucking bunker_. If Falcone’s guys come out on top, we say we were guarding the goods and maybe we walk away. They don’t, we hold the door long enough to say we surrender instead of dealing with cops running hot and wanting to shoot anything that moves. You got me? Okay? Gavin?”

“Gav,” he says, a little wild-eyed, “call me Gav. Open. Okay.” As scared as he clearly is, his hands don’t shake when he goes back to pulling a wire carefully where the panel is pulled off the electric lock.

He’s so focused he doesn’t notice the door at the end of the hall, not being slammed in or shot in, something bright, laser-like burning right through the metal around the lock. Not cops. It's Him.

Jeremy has followed all the rumours as they've sprouted and started to grow into something a little like myth. He doesn’t have a huge number of solid memories of his family, back before everything went wrong, but he does remember his grandmother’s tales at night. She was old-country Irish, so they were always halfway between a bedtime story and a vaguely threatening warning about the things that came before, that sleep under old hills, content to do so until man’s hubris rouses them in anger. Jeremy didn’t believe in any of it and he doesn't believe in this now, but if there’s anywhere they’d start it’d be Los Santos.

In the moments before the door opens he shoves his pistol into the back of Gavin’s neck sharply, jerking him forward. Gavin’s dressed every inch the civilian and his shocked distress is genuine.

“Open it before I blow out your fucking brains, you piece of-”

He has a vague impression of the figure being tall, all in black, and as he’s slammed into the wall and slips out of consciousness he really hopes it worked.

 

*

 

Geoff is socialising, and therefore plunging his own absolute depths of personal agony. He hopes he shows sufficient deference to the Police Commissioner, and tries to remember all Trevor’s carefully crafted replies about the Vagabond vigilante that manage to be a paragraph in length and say absolutely nothing.

Instead of getting put in his usual place, whichever table is for the spares, he ends up with an assortment of politicians and financiers, power-brokers and judges. The only splash of colour, both literally and metaphorically, is the purple-haired girl - Turney, he thinks, a model or something. The crisply dressed blonde man she’s with looks a lot more like he belongs at the table and is probably why she’s there.

“This is James,” she introduces politely, so obviously he isn’t hiding his floundering so well. “James Haywood.”

Haywood is a name everyone knows, and would explain why he’s wearing a suit that costs about as much as Geoff makes in a year. The thing about old money is that Geoff genuinely doesn’t give a shit, and promptly assigns the first name as irrelevant and goes back to trying to answer questions from around the table well enough that Trevor won’t cry when tomorrow’s gossip columns come out.

“At least things are getting done,” says a woman wearing too many pearls and who has probably never set foot downtown in her entire life. “Not to say that - oh I’m sure you know what I mean, Lieutenant.”

“The man is dangerous,” someone who Geoff vaguely thinks might have been in government once says. He looks older than time. “Thinks he can do anything he wants. And where does that get us when people start deciding that, hm?”

“I think he sounds very complicated,” Turney says quietly.

“I think,” says John, or Jacob, or whoever next to her, tapping a finger to his temple with a careless smirk, “that anyone who paints a skull on his face and runs around fighting people in dark alleys obviously has a few issues.”

Geoff spots Michael beckoning from across the room, and temporarily forgets he doesn’t believe in divine intervention.

“So sorry,” he says, having never been less sorry in his life. “I believe there may be an urgent work matter to attend to.”

He follows Michael outside to where Jack is waiting. So something actually to worry about, not a rescue.

“You spotted it,” Jack prompts. Michael looks a little surprised to be given the reins - well, it’s not like Geoff doesn’t know that fucking over your juniors to get ahead isn’t as rife in the force as corruption is.

Michael rallies, though. “So, uh, first response report says thirteen civilians accounted for total, two dead trying to resist, ten in the lobby, one dragged down to unlock the doors and they found him on the stairs. Except we interviewed more than five today and they’re pretty fuc- they’re pretty consistent on the fact that no one from staff was ever taken downstairs to open anything.”

Geoff leans against the wall. “And number thirteen is proving difficult to contact?”

“I told you Geoff’s psychic,” Jack informs Michael with a smile.

“Okay.” Geoff says, pulling off the idiotic uncomfortable jacket. This is more like it. “Descriptions from anyone on response or any paramedic that might have helped with our Mr. Thirteen, see what we can match up, and I want to have a go at any of the assailants medically cleared to have a little chat with us.”

 

*

 

With the barrel shoved into his neck and the kid with the gun - whose name Gavin still doesn’t even know - snarling at him to open the door before he blows his brains out, just for a moment Gavin is terrified. Just for a moment, because if nothing else he’s pretty sure he knows people, and even after less than two hours with the guy he knows something is out of place with this scenario.

The answer comes barreling through the door, a vengeful figure larger than life who sends the kid flying into the wall. He’s armoured and skull-masked, and when he speaks it’s in a growl that has to be forced, no one sounds like that.

“Hurt?”

“No,” he says, and fuck, the kid is bleeding from the head. “I'm fine, he didn’t hurt me, he just wanted me to open the door.”

The figure appears to immediately lose interest. “Go outside. Police coming.”

Gavin flees, but glances back just enough that he doesn’t miss the figure - the _Vagabond,_ that's what the newspapers call him _ _-__ picking up the kid’s gun and looking at it, then taking a grip on the front of his shirt like he means to haul him somewhere. He keeps running anyway. He’s either a coward or brave enough not to let the gesture be for nothing, and he doesn’t know which one. He walks in amongst the hostages like he’s one of them, gives the police a fake name and contact and goes home. Then he thinks of the kid whose name he wishes more than anything he’d asked for, limp on the floor, and throws up.

Two days later he’s made arrangements, and two days is too long. He’s shaken, he’s not thinking clearly, he needs to pull it together. Canada first then back to Europe. Not England, never England, but he knows people. There’s a knock on the door.

There are two of them, uniformed officers. The attractive woman with the red hair speaks first. “Mr… Gruchy, it says here? We’d like to ask you some questions.”

“Don’t lie to the man, Jack,” the other officer says, with a boyish grin and curly hair. “What she wants to do is ask you some questions. What I’d like to do is prohibited by regulations 10(1)(c), (3)(a) and section 22(7), but I can draw you a diagram.”

They take him down to the precinct and the younger officer, Michael, interviews him alone, Gavin winding him up by asking for a lawyer in every language he knows, which is quite a few. He refuses to say anything else. But he’s not on his top game and he knows Michael can tell. When Michael goes outside, presumably to talk to Jack, and Gavin can’t do anything but wait, shifting uncomfortably.

“Okay,” Michael says, when he re-enters. “We know what you do, we know you weren’t armed, and we know you don't know shit about higher up the chain compared to anyone else we brought in.  Not a great position to be in. Except for how the psycho in the mask presumably interacted with you without bashing your head in, which is interesting to us.”

Gavin swallows. “Tell me how many you arrested.”

“What?”

Gavin looks Michael right in the eyes. “He talked to me. I’ll tell you everything about it if you tell me how many you arrested.”

Michael looks conflicted for a moment, then abruptly; “Eight.”

Gavin slumps, and Michael looks almost alarmed when he has to scrub half-there tears from his eyes.

“There was a guy there who looked out for me. I don’t know why. That’s how I - he pretended like he had me at gunpoint. And after I think the Vagabond took him.”

“Took him?” Michael settles back. “That doesn’t fit the pattern. Lazy fucker always leaves the clean up to us.”

“As far as you know,” Gavin snaps. “And you cops don’t seem to know much about him.”

“Go fuck yourse-” Michael stops himself with rolled eyes. “Okay. I did my part. Now you get to tell me everything, okay? Everything he said, everything he did, what he looked like, anything you can think of. And if we get anything out of it, hey, maybe your friend does too.”

He looks alarmed for the second time in less than ten minutes when Gavin sticks a hand out across the table, but then shakes it with a half-smile.

 

*

 

Three months earlier, Ryan gets off a plane into the bustle of Los Santos and goes somewhere that isn’t home. But it’s his parents’ home, and that means his name is across the gate so he pulls the white sheet off one of the couches and sits for a while, looking around at the dust.

He wanders through rooms and wonders if he came back too early, if he’s made up of enough scar tissue inside now to be as tough as he planned to be. He shaves and does his best with his hair; looking in the mirror there’s a little more bulk to him, he’s little less soft around the edges. But truth be told he barely looks any different to the favoured son of Los Santos’ wealthiest who ran away the minute their funeral was over. Which is what he still is, he supposes.

He already knows who he’s going to call first.

It would have been preferable to start with something appropriate, like ‘hello’ or ‘I am so sorry,’ but instead all he can think of to say is “Meg. You watered the plants.”

“For three _fucking_ years,” she answers, after a few minutes of crying angrily, “while I got postcards of Monaco that they could trace back through Bhutan, Ryan, you utter fucking _asshole_. I hate you, I never want to speak to you again.”

“That’s fair,” he says softly.

She sniffles. “I’m getting pizza. I’ll be over in twenty minutes.”

He tries to clear up one room enough that it doesn’t look quite as much like a mausoleum in the time it takes for her to get there. He asks her what he’s missed, and she fills him in with the goings-on of their social circle, or at least what used to be his social circle. She tells him about the loves she’s fallen in and out of, and the photoshoot designed almost entirely to piss off the handlers her parents have hired to try to keep her out of the headlines. They do not, apparently, frequently succeed.

She only asks one question. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

_There are different ways you find a teacher, and this is one of them. Step one, go to dangerous places. Step two, do stupid, dangerous things. Step three, find a man who asks you what you’re afraid of like he’s deigning to impart some sort of wisdom to you and you know in an instant that you hate even more than you hate yourself. Aha, Ryan thinks to himself, found you._

“Yes. So I’m coming home.” He catches Meg’s expression, and squeezes her hand. “Really. I’m coming home and staying. And I’m going to-”

“Don’t,” she says. “I really love plausible deniability.” Then she brightens. “There’s a film premiere Saturday. Don’t tell anyone you’re back then come be my arm candy. We’ll blow their minds.”

 

*

 

Jeremy wakes in what appears to be a basement. Fantastic. He’s cuffed to a radiator but everything hurts too much to try to move anyway. There’s a single chair in the middle of the room, facing him, and the lunatic or hero - depending on whose editorial you are reading - that the press call the Vagabond is sitting in it.

He holds up Jeremy’s gun. Jeremy never really thought about how the Vagabond would sound when he spoke, but if he had expected anything it would be exactly this.

“Falcone doesn’t always employ the best,” he says. “But good enough not to keep the safety on in a gunfight without a reason.”

“Nah,” Jeremy says, unsure whether he’s so afraid he’s unable to feel it anymore or if it’s the concussion talking. “I'm just remarkably stupid.”

“Name,” growls the Vagabond, far too assured to be a question. “Now.”

“Fuck you,” Jeremy says.

The Vagabond seems unperturbed, but then again, Jeremy would hardly be able to tell if he wasn't. “Very well. I’m sure I’ll think of something.” He looks back at the gun. “The boy you pointed the gun at did not work in that laboratory. Ergo, he came with you. And you were intent enough not to hurt him that you turned on the safety during your little performance. Which means either he is very interesting, or you are.”

Jesus. That’s all? “Not interesting, just remarkably stupid, I told you already." He sighs, too tired for this. "I don’t fucking know, he was just a kid who shouldn't have been there.” Completely true and too ridiculous to be believed, so this is not going to end well.

“You’re just a kid,” The Vagabond says, with only just a fraction less of a growl to it, almost like he hadn’t meant to say that.

“Not for a long time,” Jeremy says, “also fuck you. In case you didn’t hear it the first time. ”

“A criminal, then,” the Vagabond allows. “For hire. Unafraid of a high risk job. Haywood owns most of this town.”

“Yeah,” Jeremy says, "I’m sure the upstanding gentleman'd be real torn up if we lifted his pocket-change worth of insured fucking price-gouged drugs.”

“Ah. How righteous. You’re a regular Robin Hood.” The masked man seems amused. “The Robin Hood of Los Santos?”

Jeremy actually laughs. “Oh, fuck no. I rob places for money and I spend the fucking money on hookers and blow. Or whatever us types are supposed to do. Do I get to ask questions now? Is the mask a fetish thing?”

The Vagabond pauses, then tilts his head. Or his skull. He reacts, anyway. “This city is eating itself alive, torn at by those who use fear against those who should not be afraid. To conquer fear, I become fear. Have you ever tried to kill fear? Harder than killing a man.”

“I am genuinely sorry I asked,” Jeremy says, with complete honesty.

“You’re also wrong about one thing,” the Vagabond says, standing up and walking to the door. “You are very interesting. So. Name?”

There is a loud silence as Jeremy stares at the wall.

“Alright. Then I’ll see you tomorrow, Robin.”

What a fucking asshole.

 

 


	3. i found peace in your violence [batman au pt 2, gavin/michael, jeremy/ryan]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for [TomKat](http://archiveofourown.org/users/TomKat/pseuds/TomKat)

 

Jeremy sleeps fitfully, and in between he braces his knees against the wall and slams all his weight back hard, pulling the cuff closed around the radiator as close as he can to where it's braced to the wall, hoping it’s the weakest point and ignoring how the metal digs into skin until it bleeds. The damn thing is ancient and unfortunately sturdy.

The Vagabond doesn’t reappear for hours, Jeremy doesn’t know how many, until he’s so hungry it hurts. He’s read enough news articles and thinkpieces on the guy to know he seems to have some sort of code about killing, and in between waging a one-man war against a solid iron appliance Jeremy leans back against the wall and tries to calculate the odds that, from a certain sociopathic perspective, it might not count if he doesn’t do it with his own hands. One could argue it’s just nature taking its course.

The door opens, and the next half hour is stranger than anything he’s been imagining, even with his mind working overtime on it because there’s nothing else to do.

For one thing, the Vagabond brings him a box of pastries and a glass of water. It’s a neat little box, the kind of plain matte white that a place will use when they’re expensive enough not to need to draw attention to it. He couldn’t even name half the things inside but he sure as hell eats them all. The Vagabond makes a sound, halfway to a growl, when he notices Jeremy’s right wrist.

“Oh, yeah,” Jeremy says, holding it up. “Any chance of switching hands?”

“Will you do the same thing as soon as I leave?”

“Oh, definitely,” Jeremy says unabashedly, finishing off the last piece of something with cinnamon.

The Vagabond grips Jeremy’s throat hard to hold him still while he undoes the handcuffs around his wrist. Then he just does nothing, holds pair of cuffs in his hand like he’s waiting. Jeremy is trying to muster up something suitably smartass to say when whatever was put in the water kicks in hard.

So his novelty has worn off, then.

“You fuck,” he slurs accusingly as his vision darkens. “Coulda let me see it coming like a man-”

He’s out too quick to notice the Vagabond catch his shoulder so his head doesn’t hit the concrete floor as he slumps to the ground.

 

*

 

Gavin is as good as his word, methodical in his explanation of events and with a clear eye for detail, and an apparently disturbingly thorough knowledge of what the standard military-grade options are on protective gear in the open market, from Kevlar to Zylon. He also occasionally confuses himself mid-sentence and has to start over. Officer Diaz, because he’s a nice person, offers to relieve him for an hour or so, and Michael declines. Then realises he gave up two hours of napping to spend more time with a suspect and also clearly he is totally fucked.

“Yeah, it was definitely customised to fit, and that’s expensive,” Gavin says, biting his fingernails. “You got anyone tall working here? Could you bring them in? It’ll help - he stood right in front of me, I can work out who is closest in height-”

He also point-blank refuses to say a word about this friend of his even when Michael gets permission from Jack to say that if they find him in one piece, he’ll get the same plea-deal Gavin is getting. Michael is pretty sure it’s an empty promise, since it’s been more than 24 hours and as far as he’s concerned the whole ‘in one piece’ part is a lost cause. But if it makes Gavin more willing to co-operate, he’ll swear blind that’s what they can give. Gavin doesn’t budge.

Michael brings two large coffees. “So how did you get involved?”

“Foreign exchange programme,” Gavin snaps, knee jiggling impatiently.

“Fine,” Michael says, and gets up and goes for the door.

“Mich- officer, okay.” Gavin says immediately. Michael, who has worked out how much Gavin hates being alone, either here at the station or maybe in general, feels a little guilty over the dirty trick.

“Haywood’s security is a mongrel, the real bitch of a kind.” Gavin sounds more impressed than annoyed. “He’s got some good bits and pieces out of Germany and Scandinavia, shit that no one here had worked with before. I’m just on loan.” He sighs and rubs his hands through his hair. “You really do things different in the States, huh?”

On loan. Like a fancy tool traded in for a favour. Not like Michael needed reminding that he hates how this city works. “Nah, that’s just Los Santos.”

After, Michael drops the transcripts and the artist’s sketch from Gavin’s description on Jack’s desk. The report is fully drafted just with space for final recommendations and her signature.

She looks up, holding the sketch up and peering at it. “So we’re on a manhunt for the grim reaper.”

“Basically.” Michael shifts. “Got everything else there for you. Did we know Falcone’s dealing transatlantic now?”

“We have been informed that our concern is noted however such a possibility would be out of our jurisdiction.” If Michael were less good at his job, he’d say her response is perfectly calm, perfectly usual. But there are little signs. “So that's that. Our instructions from the Commissioner are that apprehending the Vagabond is paramount. From what I’ve seen I have a lot of faith in your ability to move this forward, and so does Lieutenant Ramsey.”

“Yesterday he called me Mitchell and asked me how I liked the weather compared to San Francisco.”

“Lovely. He’s showing an interest.”

“I’m from _New Jersey._ ”

“Michael,” Jack says, “Geoff’s got his faults.” She thinks about it. “Geoff has a wide and varied selection of faults. Favouritism is one of them, which is why he always gives me the best picks. That'd be you.”

“I was demoted.” Michael says bluntly. “That’s why they transferred me.” The orders were stupid and have it over again he’d ignore them just with the exact same amount of satisfaction.

“I know. I got your file when we were partnered. Fantastic performance record, and insubordination write-ups that are damn near poetry. Second best I ever read.”

“I’ll work harder for the gold, ma’am,” Michael says. She smiles.

“The first best so far was Geoff’s around your age. Always had an anti-authoritarian streak, and they couldn’t even beat it out of him by pulling the dirty trick of promoting him into being an authority himself.” She takes the rest of the paperwork and pats lightly at the back of his hand as she does. “So that’s a hell of a thing, and it’s the best promise I can give you, okay?”

He leaves her office somewhat reassured, and much more confused.

 

*

 

Michael insists they have everything from Gavin’s place, and Gavin rolls his eyes and doesn’t even look at what they’ve brought out. “I’m sure whoever you sent did a very sufficient job, but no, you don’t. I’m not going to run, okay, you’ll be there the whole time being scary and official.”

“I hate you,” Michael informs him, and drives them both downtown to where Gavin’s apartment is cordoned off with police tape.

It has been turned over more than once, Gavin can tell, and he’d bet money on Falcone’s people getting there first. The more obviously useful evidence is stripped, any bills or correspondence with personal details he’d been foolish enough to keep, no matter how mundane, any photographs, business cards, phones and laptops. A few of the smaller and more expensive pieces of gaming equipment too, although whether that was Falcone’s idiots or just the fine old tradition of the Los Santos department bolstering the Friday afternoon drinks funds it’s really a coin toss.

Aha. Light-fingered they may have been, but not as smart as they think. Feeling across the slight gap between the third and fourth wooden board at the base of the pantry he pulls away to grab at the modest but serviceable amount of cash, three passports - of which one is even real - and over a decade of his life in a small handful of memory sticks, plus-

“Gav, down!” Michael yells, and Gavin dives to the floor, just as bullets take the windows out.

Okay, smarter than Gavin thought they were.

Michael shoots one down but they both end up bleeding and dragged into the living room. Gavin sort of recognises one but not by name, tall and angry and bald, and he’s never seen the one with the eyebrow scar before.

“Get rid of the cop,” eyebrow-scar says, and Gavin flinches, eyes shut and not wanting to see it as a shot rings out and blood splatters. The next second he hears Michael swear, though, and opens them to see that tall, angry and bald has hit the floor with half his skull splattered across the carpet. Eyebrow-scar is turning and gets one shot off towards the stairs but it only hits the bannister whereas he goes down with one between the eyes.

“Okay," the kid from the heist asks groggily from the top of the stairs, his gun now pointed at Michael, who has scrambled for his own and is pointing right back. "Whose fucking house is this?” The menacing edge to the tension is slightly ruined by the high-pitched noise Gavin makes when he throws himself up the stairs and wraps his arms around the kid.

Michael barely moves, but his expression changes. It seems that whatever he expected, this - someone maybe not even Gavin’s age, with a shock of blue hair and faded t-shirt and his arm moving gentle around Gavin’s waist on instinct - isn’t it. “Mr. Gruchy,” Michael says, very formally, “can you confirm the identity of this individual and an account of any previous interactions you may have had?”

“I’ve never met him before in my life, officer,” Gavin says, face buried in the crook of the kid’s neck and holding on for dear life.

Michael lowers his gun first, and Gavin whispers something at length in the kid’s ear until he does too. The three of them sit around the table while Michael calls in the incident report. The kid, who looks a whole lot worse for wear, apparently trusts Gavin enough to say his name is Jeremy. He also says he doesn’t know whether it’s creepier that the Vagabond knows where Gavin lives, whether he decided that was the best place to leave Jeremy, or that when he put Jeremy in Gavin’s bed upstairs he actually bothered to tuck him in first.

“All of the above,” Michael says, “all are very, very creepy. I need a drink.”

 

*

 

Jeremy tells them he will only speak to Officer Jones, who glances at his red-haired partner. She just shrugs like nothing would surprise her at this point, nods at him and leaves.

He tells Jones everything can remember, although whatever knocked him out hasn’t done his memory many favours. He doesn’t think he has much to add to the information Gavin gave, except that man didn’t take off the mask, he’s lucid in conversation and apparently can be distracted by something unusual, that at least one place he uses has a basement that hasn’t been renovated or cleaned in decades, and that as it turns out the devil is indeed a man of wealth and taste. Jeremy was never conscious for any of the travel, so he isn’t much use in narrowing location down either.

“Do I get a lawyer now?” Jeremy asks, tired. Jones glances up.

“You’re not being charged, Jeremy. That was the deal.”

“Which is great,” Jeremy says patiently, “And I’m sure you can make it stick for Gav. But back in the real world, I’d like to speak to a lawyer.”

“The fucking worst part,” Jones says contemplatively, “is I’d think the exact same thing if I was sitting opposite me. Fucking hell.” He shakes his head, and Jeremy isn’t sure what that’s supposed to mean. “Okay. Look, Gavin has agreed to protective custody for now.” Jeremy carefully doesn’t smile. He’s noticed how close Jones sticks to Gavin, who apparently just has that effect on people. The only difference if he hadn’t is that Jones would have had to try and pretend to have a reason for loitering armed around Gavin’s residence of choice at stupid hours. “If you’d like to-”

“Nah,” Jeremy says, not sure why Jones is still bluffing. “I can sort myself out.” He’s been setting up a backdoor exit for a long time now, and as shit as the last few days have been the fact that everyone outside the handful of people he’s spoken to in the last two hours believe he’s dead is a helpful bonus. “I wasn’t planning on staying past my debt.”

Jones raises an eyebrow, curious.

“Nope,” Jeremy says. “Nah-uh.”

Jones raises his hands in surrender, and leaves the room, and leaves the door open and Jeremy waits a full ten minutes before he really believes he’s going to get to walk out of it too, then cautiously does.

For a while, everything works pretty well. The apartment is small but he doesn’t need much. The work at the garage is almost interesting enough, and he changes his hair colour again just because he can. When the trial starts in earnest and it’s all signed off that Gavin won’t have to testify he’s told he can walk out on the stipulation that he doesn’t leave town and checks in with Officer Jones - _Michael,_ now - once a week; the first thing he does is turn up on Jeremy’s doorstep.

“This might have been stupid,” Gavin says, like it’s just occurring to him, even as the silent understanding of a shared absurd experience flickers between them like a whole conversation inside the pause.

“I have a spare room,” Jeremy says, and raises his eyebrows when the sublease is signed 'Gavin Free'.

"Hey," Gavin says, happiness infectious, "you don't _know_ that's not my real name."

Every Friday morning around ten Jeremy tells him to enjoy his coffee date. “Dress it up, he’s making an effort with the uniform.” Gavin cheerily tells him to go fuck himself.

For a while, everything works pretty well, then the news hits that the Vagabond put four on-duty policemen in hospital. There are reports of him beating them bloody in their own station before pulling it apart, but whatever he took or whatever he found no one can tell. The public discussion turns from a dialogue to a monologue, and Jeremy thinks if that lunatic wanted fear he certainly got it. The manhunt increases, shoot on sight, and it’s in every news cycle. Gavin gets about six texts in quick succession.

“If he wants to call in what I owe he can fucking do it himself-” Jeremy starts, annoyed, but Gavin interrupts, soft yet certain.

“Don’t presume. He just thought anything was worth a try, you don’t have to reply. I never gave him your number.”

Jeremy closes his eyes for a moment then stares at the ceiling. “Three out of four,” he says. “Three of them at least for certain regularly took money to look the other way while I was with Falcone. Tell Michael he can do what he wants with that.”

He leaves Gavin control of the remote and takes an early night. Or he tries to. He tosses and turns, hyper-vigilant to the point of insomnia, until he actually does hear a banging and then footsteps and jumps to his feet, gun in hand.

With the window still open and the curtain blown frantically by the wind the only movement, he stands frozen in his bedroom doorway, the Vagabond equally still in his hallway. They look at each other.

“Robin,” the Vagabond says hoarsely, “hello,” then pitches forward to bleed all over Jeremy’s carpet.

Jeremy leaves him there, going to Gavin’s door and tapping a pattern to it, locked tight from inside like he told Gavin to do if he ever heard anything. It opens.

“Vagabond. Out cold, no threat right now,” Jeremy says in one fast breath, like ripping off a band-aid. Gavin nods in acknowledgement that he understands. “If you want to call Michael I get it,” Jeremy says, gentler. “Just give me a little head start, okay?”

“You don’t think he’d keep you out of it?”

“I have no idea how in the hell he did the first time,” Jeremy says, “back when there was barely evidence I was there and they didn’t even know my name. I've got a record and the _Vagabond_ is bleeding out in my fucking _home _.__ ”

“Right,” Gavin says thoughtfully, like it’s an interesting point, that sometimes things don’t always just neatly and bizarrely fall into place at the last minute. Hell, this is Gavin. Maybe for him it usually does.

“Right,” Gavin says, “need help moving him?”

 

*

 

“Lie to me and tell me it’s coincidence,” Geoff says blankly, long after everyone else has gone home, Jack sitting on his desk looking as worried as he feels.

She shakes her head. “Same four names you asked me to look into.”

“If they’re connected we’ve got to take Michael off the Vagabond thing,” Geoff tells her, “we’ve got to. This is above _our_  heads, I don’t care how good he is I’m not dragging some rookie into this shitstorm-”

“You do that now and he’ll only chase it earlier and harder, Geoff. You would’ve. By the way, Mitchell? Really?”

“I practically stole him when the transfer came up, if I’m nice as well someone is going to catch on,” Geoff says grumpily, then shrugs in assent. “But watch him, yeah?”

“I will.”

He rests two fingers against her thumb, barely touching. “We knew something was off years ago and we fucked up then, nothings and nobodies and still learning. We’re not a lot more than that now except older, but I’m not going to fuck up this time.”

“Except now it’s a race,” Jack points out wryly. “Or the universe kicking our ass for taking too long. I don't think he's looking to wait for a jury.”

 

*

 

Ryan knows he got cocky tonight, riding high after finding what he needed in amongst the old archived digital files and correspondence from back when it was another name calling the shots in the underbelly of the city, but the game was being played exactly the same. He went big again too soon, going for one of Falcone’s private residences.

The thing about trying to fool people into thinking that you’re more than human is that sometimes you fool yourself a little as well. He moves through hired security like it’s a game, but once he’s inside they know what they’re doing and he more than holds his own until he lets the anger in, punches a couple more times when the guy is already out, focuses too hard on the one who got a hit in because it offends him and doesn't concentrate enough to count right how many are on the stairs. He takes enough shots that some hit home at a joint or weak point in his armour, protection sacrificed for mobility. For the first time, he barely makes it out.

Even this time of night the main streets are crowded enough that he panics over causing collateral damage to civilian vehicles, and only loses the cars following by driving into a darkened storefront, trusting the body armour to keep him conscious enough to scramble free in time. The cars that follow are swallowed up in the wreck and subsequent fireball, and the ones that veer away lose visual on him, and he runs.

His hom- that house is more than halfway across town, and he’s not getting back there before he loses too much blood to stay upright. He blinks at a street sign until he stops seeing double, and then the seed of a very reckless thought takes root.

He thinks back and remembers just after the break-in at his lab, perusing with dubious legality various databases and still stinging a little from having two kids pull one over him like that. He had searched out everything he could about the light haired one with the British accent, and found nothing to be afraid of.

“You know when you asked me to tell you when you crossed the line?” Meg had informed him, bored and perched on his desk. “Keeping someone in your basement is crossing the line, Rye.”

“I’m not going to hurt him, it's just while I check,” Ryan had said.

"Bullshit," Meg told him.

Ryan can't ever hide from her. “He just makes no sense,” he had admitted.

“Pot, kettle,” Meg muttered, and handed over a box from her favourite patisserie. “Feed him something then put him back.”

So he gave the kid back to his friend, but the curiosity didn’t go away. At a board meeting where the only thing keeping him sane was pulling faces with Ashley across the table and not getting caught, he decided to surrender to temptation and cornered her after and asked for help. It’s Ashley because he trusts her, and if he could have signed over his controlling share in the company to her and Burnie he’d have done it years ago. They have some very firm opinions, though, about the brand value of his family name.

“I’m about to ask you for a weird favour,” he had said, and Ashley had smiled.

“All the favours you ask for are weird, Ryan. I know better than to ask.” She brought back the goods in record time, including a number of names he presumes are mostly if not all aliases as well as two addresses, one of them newer than the other.

“Interesting friend,” Ashley had said with a smile.

“Acquaintance.” Ryan corrected. “Thank you.”

Here and now, the seed of a very reckless thought takes root, because for whatever reason he remembers the address clearly and he’s not so very far from it. It’s an effort to move, but he’s gotten good at ignoring that when he has a goal in sight. He climbs in the window, unforgivably clumsily, and gets blood on the windowpane.

He’s barely set foot when he registers the familiar figure with a gun aimed at him already, hair still bright but red now, how fitting. “Robin,” he says, and it feels like a shared joke even if Ryan’s probably the only one who finds it funny, “hello,” then he blacks out.

He wakes in a bed. Robin has a pair of tweezers, and seems to have managed to get rid of most of the body armour. He hasn’t touched the mask. Ryan stifles a sharp breath as he pulls another bullet from his leg.

“Last one,” he says, resting his palm flat on Ryan’s chest. He points at some pills on the bedside table. “Better than over the counter stuff, but it’ll probably put you back to sleep.”

“No.” Ryan says.

Robin nods like he expected it, and touches Ryan’s neck, pulling his hand away covered in blood. “I need to take that mask off.”

“ _ _No.__ ” Ryan says.

“Okay.” He sits back. “I’m just going to wait here until you pass out again from the blood loss and do it anyway, that’s fine.”

Ryan tries to shift even the slightest bit up, and the whole room swims into incomprehensible blurs. He stills.

“Do I get to handcuff you this time?” Robin asks, the question amused.

“Whatever turns you on,” Ryan replies without meaning too, walls all down like they would be if it were Meg. He doesn’t want to think about that.

“Jesus,” Robin says, properly laughing. “It only takes-” he glances over at the blood splattered plate of metal pieces, “eight bullets in you to get an actual joke? Hey,” he reaches over and puts his hand on Ryan’s wrist. “Trade you what you wanted last time we chatted. My name for the mask?”

He just makes no sense at all. Ryan nods, just barely.

When he takes Ryan’s mask off he shakes his head at the facepaint underneath, a mirror of the hardened plastic skull in whites and blacks. There’s a reason Ryan wears the mask, though, and paint alone wouldn’t usually be enough to hide when his face plastered over as many front pages and magazine covers as it is. So he’s relieved, and embarrassingly enough a little annoyed, that there is no spark of recognition.

“Jeremy,” the kid he’s been thinking of as Robin says. “I’m Jeremy. Oh, that is going to need more than butterfly stitches.”

“Whatever you have,” Ryan says, trying to keep his voice as close to the Vagabond as he can, “then I need to go.”

“You’re going nowhere,” Jeremy informs him, and sounds like he’s going to say more, when someone else ambles in with Ryan’s belt in hand, fiddling with the attachments and speaking at a hundred miles a minute with a British accent.

“You won’t believe what these can- I think I can fix this one, look at how the magnets are used with the… what the _bloody hell_  isJames Haywood doing in _your bed?_ ”

 

*

 

The dissonance between the figure that gave Jeremy nightmares for days and the man lying in his bed, still too pale and sleeping most of the time and heir to billions, apparently, is a lot to process. Or it is for Jeremy; Gavin’s too delighted with the gadgets he’s got his hands on and Ryan seems unbothered by his desire to pull them apart and put them back together, occasionally working a little better.

Jeremy freaks out a little when he enters and James isn’t there, before he realises he’s just moved to the balcony, watching dusk fall. He’s too tall to wear anything of Jeremy’s, so he’s in the most oversized mismatch of clothes Gavin could find in his cupboard.

"James?”

“Ryan,” he says. It’ll take a while for Jeremy to get used to him dropping the forced growl. “Middle name, I prefer it with people wh- I prefer it.”

“Ryan,” Jeremy repeats agreeably, and sits down next to him.

“This is the part where you ask questions,” Ryan adds, throwing Jeremy’s words from the basement back at him, blinking when he fails to find a hint of resentment in Jeremy's reply.

“Well, I regretted it last time,” Jeremy says, “But, okay. I figure you’re fighting something.”

“This.” Ryan stares outwards at the spiderweb of lights, each road a vein pulsing through the city. “A place as far compromised as I will be before I’m done. Poisoned and poisonous the both of us, we’re a good fit for each other.”

“Okay,” Jeremy says blandly. So he still talks like that with the mask off. He doesn't press further, because maybe Ryan doesn’t know how to exist and not to be at war anymore but as far as Jeremy is concerned Los Santos isn’t monstrous, it’s like any other force of nature; just indifferent. “Hey, you find what you wanted from the bent cops?"

“Yes. But there are pieces still missing.” Ryan stands, not altogether easily. “A compromise,” he says to Jeremy. “You and Gavin, you take me back to my house. I show you what I found, clear this debt,” he gestures at the gauze wrapped tight and visible at his shoulder and wrists, “and you decide if I’m crazy.”

The ride down the driveway to the Haywood home is as long as the street Jeremy grew up on, and Ryan leads them through the house carelessly and tells them to make themselves comfortable.

“My whole apartment could fit in this room,” Jeremy tells him. “Like, the whole thing.”

“Is this what I think it is?” Gavin breathes out, reaching for a small, very complicated looking object with a lot of moving parts.

“Yes,” Ryan says, “and if you’re interested, it would cost about the same as Jeremy’s apartment, so we come in a full circle.” He puts a laptop in front of them, and Gavin leans over to take charge of it, flicking through files, emails and spreadsheets.

“Shit,” Gavin says, “shit, oh _shit_.”

“Translate this into a snappy headline for me,” Jeremy says, eyes on Ryan instead as Gavin makes more and more stifled, shocked little noises.

“Mayor wants to win an election. Falcone’s predecessor wants a particular Police Commissioner, for the expected reasons." Ryan holds a finger up with each point. "The names of all the little details that got in the way, and the money or property or jobs or lives they had until they didn’t get in the way anymore.” He leans over and snaps the laptop shut, Gavin jerking back.

“Are your parents on the list?” Jeremy did some googling before he got here.

“ _Jeremy,_ ” Gavin hisses.

Jeremy is unrepentant. This isn't a time for delicacy. “Anything I did on that list?”

“I don’t see how that matters,” Ryan says, in answer to one of those questions, or maybe both. “Thank you for the assistance you have given me. Feel free to stay the night.”

He leaves without pointing the way to the bedrooms, or the kitchen, or providing a helpful map, which Jeremy feels should be obligatory in a house the size of an entire apartment block.

 

*

 

Ryan is at college when he gets the call, although not at class. Only a handful of classes manage to hold his attention and he thinks, then, that he has all the time in the world.

He gets the call, and goes back to Los Santos to identify his parents’ bodies.

The police department throw all their resources at it, because of the headlines, because of his family’s name. One night at 4am when he can’t sleep he looks up to count how many muggings ending in deaths have been reported in the time since he got that call, and wonders who is looking in to those. But he’s got more time and more money than they do, and he’s not looking to hold any kind of trial.

It’s a race neither wins, because a two-bit junkie is found dead a little later, the coroner concluding he messed up the dose, and they know it was him because he hadn’t yet got around to pawning all of Ryan’s mother’s jewelry. And that’s all there is to it, a sad little ending brought by a sad broken someone who didn’t know who they were, what they’d built and what they owned and how a few simple words of theirs could change the course of hundreds of lives in this city every day. It was just a thing that happened, as it happens all the time.

“Ryan?”

Ryan blinks out of his reverie, clipping one of the smaller magnetised grappling cables to his belt as Jeremy enters, glancing around.

“A lot of toys,” he says quietly. “Gavin will love this room. He has something of yours to show you that he thinks he made do lasers… better. Or more. I wasn’t actually listening.”

Ryan grunts.

“Lots of tech, and no guns.”

“I don’t use guns.”

“I do,” Jeremy says. “I shoot people with them, like all the rest do.”

“What do you _want _?__ ” Ryan snarls, wheeling around, pushing into his space and Jeremy backs into the wall.

“Wanted to work out why you think I’m some kind of special,” Jeremy says, “but I think I’m figuring it.” Ryan realises how close he’s gotten, pinning Jeremy in against the wall, and Jeremy has his hands resting against Ryan’s upper arms but is not pushing away. Ryan can't say Jeremy's got it wrong, but he certainly doesn't have anywhere near the whole of it. 

He’s not allowed to have this. He decided that, before he came back. And nothing Jeremy says can-

“I’m not a budding urban legend or anything but I have been told I’m decent back-up,” Jeremy says, Ryan pulls away, looking anywhere else. “And I’ve no particular desire to be looking over my shoulder for Falcone the rest of my life. You’re having another go at him, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Can I come?”

Ryan half-laughs, disbelieving. Some kind of special indeed. “Why would _you_ want any part of my fight?”

“Apart from the obvious?” Jeremy says, leaning back against the wall like an invitation, then meets Ryan’s eyes, a little more serious. “I haven’t got the world figured out in could-be’s and should-be’s like you, I just make decisions. This is my city, and it's lots of things, but mostly it’s indifferent. And you can say you match all you like but you’re not that. So my decision is I want in.”

 

*

 

“If you come over I have something to show you,” Gavin says over the phone, “but I really need you to promise not to panic about it.”

It’s such a promising start to a conversation, especially while Michael is exhausted, filthy, and running high on more adrenaline than he’s felt in years. When the call came through of a firefight at what they knew to be one of Falcone’s vacation mansions it was a call out for every armed officer within radius, and whoever tore through that place like a hurricane left enough for them to at least have reason to hold the smug bastard on pending charges for 48 hours, which is more than they’ve had on him since ever.

“I’ll be over in twenty,” Michael says, because fuck it, he’s going to have a shower first.

When he arrives at Jeremy’s apartment he finds Jeremy looking bruised but cheerful with a split lip and a goddamn bullet wound in his shoulder, Gavin practically vibrating with what he wants to say and holding the Vagabond mask loosely in his hand, and the actual James Haywood - as in billionaire industrialist _James Haywood_ \- next to them, looking somewhat resigned and amused.

“What the fuck,” he says, because each of these pieces individually presents a challenge to take in and acknowledge. “What,” he repeats louder and with great feeling, when his brain then puts them together to make a whole, “the _fuck_.”

Instead of explaining how things happened, which will come later and at great length, they pull up what they have on a laptop and so he can see what they have to show for it, and give him space as he reads through it all. They know it can’t be easy.

“Is there anyone you work with who you’d be sure about, with-” Gavin trails off.

“After reading this?” Michael says, raw and hurt in a way that doesn’t suit him. He's shared late nights and early coffees on the job with too many of these people. “I’m not sure about anyone.”

“We shouldn’t have brought you into this,” Haywood says, not so much an apology as a jab aimed unsubtly at the other two.

“No one?” Gavin asks.

“Doesn’t just have to be one,” Jeremy says, straight to Michael. “Could be everyone. Anything is worth a try, right?”

It means trusting in Geoff, which means it all hinges on what Jack’s convoluted promise about him is worth. Michael takes a copy of everything on an unassuming memory card and talks Geoff into coming to his office, making it sound like there’s something worrying him, and Geoff takes the bait. When he gets there Jon Risinger is in the room already, notebook out.

“Care to tell me why you’re sending Officer Jones to tell me we need to talk privately? Do I misunderstand the definition of privately?” Jon asks, a little unsettled.

“When he tells me,” Geoff says, glaring at Michael, “I’ll let you know.”

“I’ve got something to show you,” Michael tells them both. It takes a long time to read through it all, and after the first few minutes Geoff holds on to Michael’s wrist like an apology the entire rest of the time. Jon whispers "jesus," sympathetic but also with a journalist's abstract appreciation for anything that shakes up the status quo like this does.

Geoff also makes the big-name arrests, hand-cuffs his own boss on the steps of town hall with Jack and in front of a crowd. They give Jon his front page photo and together the two of them weather the scandal and the politics and the red tape, the weight of national attention, while Jon puts everything out there in black and white and crafts a narrative around the facts anyone can connect with, keeping momentum on their side. The Vagabond will be back in headlines in a few months, but for now there is only one story, and everything else is pretty much void.

Michael goes and gets coffee alone on a Friday. He’s halfway through it when someone slides into the booth across from him.

“You know you don’t have to check in anymore,” Michael says, for lack of anything better to say. “That’s all dropped.”

“I know,” Gavin says. “Bit relieved to see you, honestly, I’d have looked like a real tosser if I was the only one who showed up.” He studies the menu. “I want that milkshake to go, and then you should come back to my place. We can play Mario Party.”

“Jeremy’s place?”

“My place now.” Gavin grins. “Jeremy’s moved in somewhere much more convenient for his new work. Bigger, too.”

 

*

 

There’s an old theatre, been abandoned for years, and the floodlights on the roof that used to proclaim opening night across the skyline haven’t worked for almost as long. One of them has been fixed, recently. New bulb and new glass put in, metal overlaid across it and unbolted so it can be pointed upwards.

It’s cold up there but Geoff has a decent coat and while he’s not usually one to blindly obey anonymous texts, it’s been a week for the unusual.

“Your idea?” Geoff asks the dark.

The Vagabond steps out until he’s just visible and tilts his head. “Michael’s. Although probably not only his.”

“He’s a good kid.”

“He trusts you. I will try to. But I won’t stop watching; it is important to be watched.”

Geoff wasn’t expecting that. He also doesn’t expect it when the Vagabond moves forward fully into the light and reaches for the strap on his mask to undo it. _“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”_ he says, like he’s talking to himself.

“Don’t,” Geoff says immediately, and realises before he said it he hadn’t been certain, but he is now. He’s too old and too much part of the system and anyway Michael knows, so the future is taken care of. “I don’t care who you are. I just know we’ll need you.”

“Then call when you do,” the Vagabond says, and leans over and flicks the switch on the light. As it blares bright the skull silhouette hits the clouds.

He’s gone before Geoff looks away from it.

 

 


End file.
